Necrothrall's Hobby Blog: July 2014

Well I've now completed just over a third of the Zulus I need. Took me a while.

my second unit of unmarried Zulus.

my second unit of married Zulus

and my third unit of married Zulus.

the whole bunch with an over saturation of light

Given that I've been painying a whole load of Zulus lately its quite understandable that I've been getting bored of them. So to take a wee break from them I've started painting Rorke's Drift itsself. Here's a work in progress

The roof needs a few more coats to cover the last of the white, unfortunately I've ran out of the colour I was using. I also paint all the wood, another third of the bricks and maybe darken the bricks too. I figure that the buildings might work quite nicely on a Malifaux board.

I've also painted some bolter fodder for my Chaos Marines.

I've ordered myself the Stormclaw box set and will be trading the Orks for more Spacewolves with a friend. So over the next few weeks I'll be painting Spacewolves. I might even try and get the army finished. However until that happens I'll just paint more random minis I find on my desk.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and my good self went to Bannockburn Live, a festival celebrating the battle of Bannockburn, or as we Scots know it "Where we beat the bastards!". And I know what you're going to ask, why is a festival review on a wargaming blog? Well that's because there was a medieval re-enactment. And re-enactments are wargames with real people. Its also something I've always wanted to do.

Bannockburn Live was a festival celebrating Scottish culture, food, crafts and music along with a big battle repeated 3 times a day. Now how can I sum it up in one phrase.... a load of fucking overpriced shite. The craft section was 10 tiny stalls many of which were selling stuff that was too big to lug about a crowded festival, like furniture made from oak kegs. There were only 4 food venders (although I have since heard there was a hidden 5th one) catering for 10,000 people, yes I said 10,000. And there was a farmers market... a small farmers market... that sold sweets... and sea food. I have no idea why anyone would want to lug a lobster around a hot summer festival.

Now my main gripe with the event... The fucking ques. Out of the five hours we were there we must have spent at least three and a half of them in a que. There was a que to get parked. There was a que to get in, and from that que we could see the que on the motorway. There was a que for the battle, luckily we got into the first one and missed the que for the others which stretched the complete length of the event (that isn't an exaggeration). There were ques for the food which moved once every 45 minutes. We were in that one for well over 2 hours before we decided we'd had enough and left. We paid £52 (for the pair of us and parking) to stand in a fucking que simulator. I'm glad I had my tickets delivered to my house because the people who collected theirs at the gate had to que to get parked the walk past the entrance que (which was about a mile long, again not an exaggeration), collect their tickets walk to the back of the entrance que and make it even longer. Whereas people who bought theirs on the day could walk straight in, WTF?

Now onto the good points. The story time stage was good, some great acting and was generally quite a good laugh. However it was located too close to the music stage and was hard to hear at times. The music stage was good too with a variety of Scottish artists. The battle was good too, not the best I've seen but definitely the largest. The medieval camp was great, although due to the tight scheduling of the battles was practically empty for vast portions of the day. However with 10,000 people there and only 3,000 people being able to view the battle at once and only 3 battles a day means that 1,000 people were left out. Pretty bizarre considering that the battle was the main draw of the event.

The Sunday was supposedly better organized and relatively que-less. I don't quite believe that and can't comment. Now given my experiences of the event will I go next year? Absolutely not. The event was far too overpriced and poorly organized. The organizers had a chance to create something great and failed. All in all a very poor celebration of the 700th anniversary of Scotland's most famous battle.

I'll leave you with the pictures I took during the day.